FAQ
- What is the claim limit?
- A patent's claims are its numbered legal statements, often up to 20. Free plans screen the first 3 claims (including claim 1, the broadest). Paid plans screen all 20. Within each claim, every individual limitation gets scored.
- Is this legal advice?
- No. It is an engineering screening aid that maps your design against patent claim limitations. For anything you rely on, hire a patent attorney.
- What is a limitation?
- Each element a claim requires. A claim that recites a housing, a plunger, and a bladder has three limitations. To infringe, a product must practice EVERY one. Miss one and the claim does not read on your design.
- What is the distance score?
- 0 means your design matches every limitation scored. 100 means at least one limitation is clearly absent from every analyzed claim. In between means gray zones a lawyer should look at.
- Why start at claim 1?
- Claim 1 is the broadest independent claim. If your design clears claim 1, dependent claims usually fall with it. You can paste more claims for a deeper pass.
- What about the Doctrine of Equivalents?
- A design can infringe without matching claim text word-for-word. A match score of 2 or 3 on a limitation is exactly where equivalents arguments live. Scores of 0 or 1 with high confidence are the safest breaks.
- Do you store my design?
- No. Your claims and description are sent to the scoring engine and returned to you. We keep only a daily hit count per address for the free limit, never the content.